Day: September 24, 2011

In Rio de Janeiro, Juice Bars That Are More Than Juice

By SETH KUGELIf you caught the recent front page article in the Times entitled “Foreigners Follow Money to Booming Brazil, Land of $35 Martini,” you know how expensive Brazil has become. By some measures, Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo are now more costly than London or New York or Oslo — amazing considering that some of their municipal services are more like those in La Paz or Dakar.

Needless to say Brazil’s booming economy and strong currency have made it a difficult place to travel on the cheap. I’ll never stop recommending Rio de Janeiro as a destination, but these days surviving a budget trip to the city requires a few tricks.

Foreigners Follow Money to Booming Brazil, Land of $35 Martini
By SIMON ROMERO

The New York TImes

Published August 12, 2011

RIO DE JANEIRO — Pondering the financial storms lashing Europe and the United States, Seth Zalkin, a casually dressed American banker, sipped a demitasse and seemed content with his decision to move here in March with his wife and son. “If the rest of the world is cratering, this is a good place to be,” said Mr. Zalkin, 39.

For those with even the dimmest memories of Brazil’s own debt crisis in the 1980s, the global order has been turned on its head. The American economy may be crawling along, but Brazil’s grew at its fastest clip in more than two decades last year and unemployment is at historic lows, part of the nation’s transformation from inflationary basket case into one of Washington’s top creditors.

Ipanema Beach in Rio de Janeiro. Prices for prime office space in Rio became the highest for any city in the Americas this year.

With compensation rivaling that on Wall Street, so many foreign bankers, hedge fund managers, oil executives, lawyers and engineers have moved here that prices for prime office space surpassed those in New York this year, making Rio the costliest city in the Americas to lease it, according to the real estate company Cushman & Wakefield.